DEMENTED GERMAN CHILDREN'S BOOK

The best scenes from the most demented German children’s book ever published

If you possess any sort of fluency in the German language, there's a good chance you've encountered children's author Heinrich Hoffman's 1845 bedtime classicStruwwelpeter. In this collection of morality tales, children are — with gleeful abandon — immolated, humiliated, and mutilated by men with giant scissors. Pleasant dreams, everyone!

Unlike, say, Aesop's Fables, in which chatty animals steer the reader toward the path of moral rectitude, Struwwelpeter is more interested in teaching children that A.) there are a litany of ways to die painfully; and B.) that their own stupidity and lack of 19th century Teutonic manners are almost always the cause.

MUCH MORE:   io9.com